Page 105 - ECOlogic Book

Close Encounters and the Mystery of Otherness
(Spring, 1996)

There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object he look’d upon,
That object he became
And that object became part of him
For the day or a certain part of the day
Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.
Walt Whitman

Glowing amber eyes stare at me. Or through me. I stare back, trying to
fathom the fire behind them. Who is this Other? What does it want? Will it
attack me or lick my hand? Will it eat me for breakfast? It both attracts and
repels me and I don’t know whether to reach out or run away. I’m keenly
aware of how much I don’t know; humbled by the realization of how much
lies beyond my understanding.

Animals
Perhaps we are most immediately aware of Otherness when we look into the
eyes of an animal. It keeps zoos in business; people keep coming, trying to
figure it out. Matt Fox, telling of his beloved dog Tristan, observes, “How
impossible it is to know what goes on within and behind those deep, black
eyes, eyes that could stare anyone down without blinking. Who will ever
know the secrets behind the eyes – and into the souls – of animals?” 120

Before an animal, or a phenomenon we haven’t figured out, we are
humbled, keenly aware of our limitations. In the face of Otherness we know
ours is not the only intelligence around. We can’t control or predict it. We
try to categorize it: predator, domesticated, creepy.

Commenting on the ways shamans work with Otherness, David Abram
notes: “Only by temporarily shedding the accepted perceptual logic of his or
her culture can the shaman hope to enter into a rapport with the multiple
nonhuman sensibilities that animate the local landscape. We do not know,
with full clarity,” he says, “their desires or motivations – we cannot know, or
can never be sure we know, what they know.” 121

120 Fox, Matthew, “Animals as Spiritual Directors,” Winter, 1995/96 Earthlight

121 Abraham, David, “the Ecology of magic,,” from Ecopyschology Restoring the Earth Healing the Mind,” by
Roszak, et. al (Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, CA, 1995, P. 310).

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